1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of networking. More specifically, the present invention relates to approaches for addressing the issue of transmission collision in a shared media of a harsh networking environment.
2. Background Information
Recent advances in microprocessor and communication technology have led to an increasing number of computers and other digital devices (such as, printers, scanners and so forth) being networked together. Computers or digital devices of close proximity to one another are networked together locally through a local area network (LAN), which in turn are networked with other locally networked remote computers/digital devices by internetworking the LANs via wide area networks (WAN). However, the popularity and success in networking computers and other digital devices together are still substantially confined to the work place, where the networking environment is typically a well controlled environment (in terms of control attenuation, delay, echo and so forth). Networking computers and peripherals together in the home remains a challenge, as economics dictate that the networking be accomplished in a less controlled environment, using existing power, lines or phone lines, as called for by industry initiatives such as the Consumer Electronics Bus (CEBus(copyright)) promoted by the Electronic Industry Association (EIA-600) and Anypoint(trademark) Home Networking available from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif.
Similar to all shared media networks, one of the issues that needs to be addressed is the problem of transmission collision, i.e. more than one transmitter accessing the media at substantially the same time. One way to address the issue is to avoid it through ownership arbitration. While the approach is employed by many bus systems, such as the Universal Serial Bus or the Peripheral Control Interconnect Bus, ownership arbitration have generally been considered to be too inefficient for local area networking. Furthermore, if ownership is determined through token passing, as practiced in token ring networks, the token may be lost in a harsh networking environment. Another way to address the issue is to accept it by employing an acknowledgement scheme. That is, a transmitter will re-transmit the data unless an acknowledgement is received from the intended recipient. The acknowledgement approach is probably the most popular approach employed in the home and other harsh networking environments. However, the approach is relatively inefficient, as the transmitter has to wait for the acknowledgment to complete a transmission. The data may have actually been received by the intended recipient, and it is only the acknowledgment that ran into collision.
The carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) is probably the most popular approach for implicitly arbitrating and controlling access to a shared media. However, CSMA/CD tends to work well only in well defined and tightly controlled networking environment, such as the popular Ethernet network, as defined by the ISO/IEC 8802-3 standard (which adopted the ANSI/IEEE Standard 802.3). In home networking, and other less controlled harsh networking environment, because of noise and other environmental problems, it is difficult to distinguish the noise or echo phenomenon from another transmission source.
Accordingly, a more efficient networking approach for harsh networking environment, such as home networking, is desired.
A novel networking method is disclosed. Under the novel networking method, at least one silent slot is included in either a collision detection prefix (CDP) disposed before a preamble of one or more frames of data, or in the one or more frames data, to be transmitted across a media. Transmission collision is detected during the at least one silent slot included.